This invention relates to a new combination of components for giving unmistakable positive audio, visual and kinesthetic feedback to the user for training the movements of the body to properly execute a motion in the golf swing called lag. And, in particular, to a new combination of components and a method which includes a basic swing lag trainer to which the golfer can attach multiple training tools at the same time. For the first time in the history of golf instruction, a golfer can now combine and use multiple unlimited training tools together in order to learn how to develop the lag of a tour pro. This synergistic combination of elements provides a level of instruction and instant results that has been unattainable with any previous training aid by itself.
The golf swing is a most complicated movement that is best accomplished by the interaction of the alternating contraction and relaxation of opposing muscle groups. Because this movement occurs in less than two seconds and must be coordinated to the millisecond, it cannot be controlled by conscious thought. It must be trained through the subconscious mind. Thus while in training, it is desirable that the golfer have audio, visual and kinetic feedback of how the club is swung in a correct golfing stroke, so that they can keep mental interference to a minimum.
Once the club is cocked in the backswing, the most common mechanical fault among golfers is the premature releasing of the ninety-degree angle between the radial surface of the leading arm and the club. Professional golfers are said to retain this power angle through their swings longer than less accomplished amateur golfers and therefore, consistently obtain more accuracy and distance in their golf shots. Basically tour pros develop lag in their swings and amateur golfers do the opposite. The opposite of lag, the most common fault of recreational golfers, is called by many names, namely releasing early, flipping, clubhead throwaway, chicken winging, scooping, etc. ‘Coming over the top and casting’ the golf club is one of the most common descriptions given to this amateur affliction. Generally speaking, unless you are a Tour Pro or low single digit handicap golfer, you're ‘coming over the top and casting’ the golf club. Obviously, human beings as a rule, make the wrong moves when first presented with the problem of hitting a golf ball far and straight. Human being's are evidently pre-programmed by their DNA to make the ‘coming over the top and casting’ move. That would explain why seventy-eight percent of all golfers can't break ninety. The chief culprit in a golfer's poor scoring efforts resides mostly in the upper right quadrant of the body for a right-handed golfer. They bring this area of the body into play at the wrong time in the swing. I've long been fascinated with the three-dimensional aspects of the golf swing, such as the ninety degree and forty-five degree angles created as a golfer moves the club thru a full golf swing, things such as the clubhead rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise as it moves through the various positions of the swing. Unfortunately the straight shaft of a golf club is one-dimensional and does not give a golfer enough three-dimensional feedback to learn how the club should be positioned in time and space and the body sequencing needed to create the lag of a tour pro.
We have found that the holy grail of the mechanics of the golf swing is creating and sustaining lag and then releasing that lag at the exact millisecond which ensures solid contact with and compression of the golf ball. Lag in the golf swing is usually thought of as ‘holding the ninety degree angle’ formed by the leading arm and the club shaft. Lag allows you to create centrifugal force, which stores power until it is released at impact creating what every golfer desires, namely shots that fly long and straight. Lag creates the forward leaning shaft at impact, which is the popular term now for what happens in a tour pro's swing. Actually this is just one of the manifestations or effects that happen when you create lag in your swing.
We've all noticed that the tour pro's and their swings vary in setup, grip, body style—just about everything imaginable. But, the one thing they all do is create lag. To create lag, they all make the same motion from the “delivery zone” thru impact. So, it makes total good sense to concentrate on learning the one mechanical motion that separates the tour pros from the amateurs, lag. Unfortunately, this lag is an elusive feeling to capture on a consistent basis. The problem we all face is that, even though we know what happens mechanically in the golf swing down to the millisecond, we don't know how that movement feels. Albert Einstein explains the problem with this quote—“The only source of knowledge is experience, everything else is just data.” We have all of this information about the swing, but it is only data. It doesn't and can't give us the feeling that a tour pro experiences when they create lag in their swings. And, since, we don't know the feel of lag and haven't experienced that feeling on a consistent basis, we are unable to create it at will.
Stewart Maiden, who was the teacher of Bobby Jones, agrees with us. He said, in 1922, that ‘coming over the top and casting’ the golf club was the main fault of the average golfer and the main cause of every other fault in their golf swings.
Obviously, conventional golf instruction hasn't addressed this issue or we wouldn't have the cover of golf magazines proclaiming how to correct your slice every other year for at least the last fifty years. One article will tell you how you should hold the ninety degree power angle of the lead forearm and the club as you swing down to the ball, the next article will tell you that you must release that angle right away in order to hold the angle. Conflicting advice is very common in conventional golf instruction and especially so in the matter of learning lag. Because of this dichotomy, golfers have no easy roadmap to achieving the lag of the tour pros in their own swings.
We happened upon the Golf Swing Lag Training System by a serendipitous sequence of events. For the last 25 years, we have been holding golf schools in Lawrence, Kans. and around the country. In 2004, I co-authored a book named Tour Tempo. It was published by Doubleday of New York and became an international best seller, because, for the first time in the history of golf, we explained how to easily learn the tempo of a tour pro by sequencing your swing to a series of scientifically spaced tones that were based on the swings of the tour pros.
Over this course of time, I would also continue to invent training aids that I thought would help the average golfer that came to our golf schools get better. It finally dawned on me that this lagging of the club was a very difficult proposition to master, and that this mechanical motion of lagging was what I had been actually working on all these years. The challenge, then, was to invent a simple to use system that gave golfers the ability to immediately learn the lag of a tour pro, and then, to combine that with Tour Tempo and allow them to now play the best golf of their lives.
We have accomplished this with the Golf Swing Lag Training System. It works with all golfers, from tour pros thru beginners. The reason it works is explained by Percy Boomer, the author of ‘On Learning Golf’ (the longest continuously published golf instruction book in the history of golf). He said that you learn the golf swing by stringing together a series of sensations. So, to paraphrase Percy, you link together a series of perceptions and/or feelings to learn how to create and sustain the lag of a tour pro in the golf swing. After over fifty-two years of playing golf and over twenty-seven years of teaching golf, I have to agree with Percy Boomer, learning to lag the club like a golf pro must be done by sensation, or as its more commonly known, by feel.
We have achieved significant, immediate results in clubhead speed, which is one of the main indicators of whether a golfer has lag or not. For example, a PGA tour pro has an average driver clubhead speed of 105 mph to 115 mph. Your recreational golfer's average driver clubhead speed is around 80 to 90 mph
We have sixty and seventy year old male golfers increasing their clubhead speed from an average of eighty mph with a driver to eighty-eight mph in less than five minutes of use of the Golf Swing Lag Training System. To give you an idea of how good this is we only need to peruse a 2007 study by the Department of Exercise and Sport Science, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif. as reported in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. They did a study to see how much more clubhead speed could be developed by older male golfers if they embarked on an 8-week progressive functional training program.
After putting in thirty-six hours of progressive functional training, which consisted of three 90 minute sessions a week for eight weeks, the golfers increased their clubhead speeds from 79.1 to 83.0 miles per hour. The authors of the study were very happy with a four mph increase with eight weeks of working out, when we were able to double that increase in five minutes. One of our test subjects, a sixty three year old male, increased his driver clubhead speed from 88 mph to over 105 mph in less than a month. Another test subject, a sixty year old lady golfer, increased her clubhead speed from 80 mph to 96 mph in less than a day. So we can see that by using the Golf Swing Lag Training System, golfer's have experienced new and unexpected results manifested by immediate and substantial increases in clubhead speed and lag.
The Golf Swing Lag Training System consists of five main components. The first is a basic lag trainer that through a clamping means can be interchangeably attached to the four other accessories, although it is not limited to the four, as we will explain. The basic lag trainer gives the golfer the sensation of how the wrists and forearms are used in the swing. The second component of the Golf Swing Lag Training System is a three-dimensional trainer that gives positive and negative feedback to the golfer as the swinging movement is made from start to finish. The third is an air resistance device that provides the correct feel of how the body is connectedly turned and rotated in the swing. The fourth is a shaft that includes a sliding mechanism that is best when only used with one arm at a time, although it could be used with both arms simultaneously. The sliding mechanism is constructed so that multiple and unique types of resistance can be attached to it. It gives the golfer the sensation of the correct release of the club through impact. The fifth component is a device that trains the golfer through kinesthetic feel how to engage the correct muscles at address and also how to use these muscles to start swinging the club into the backswing.
Even though we have found that this combination of devices is the best, it should be noted that regulation golf clubs and unlimited combinations of other training aids could also be mounted onto the basic lag trainer in order to learn the feel of a correct swing that exhibits the lag of a tour pro.
We have found that when any of these components or even other swing trainers are used only by themselves the results can be immediate, but with continued use of the individual trainer, these initial results will not endure. The golfer will only develop another incorrect movement in their swing, thereby losing the initial benefit that they experienced with that individual swing trainer. We have also found that for the majority of golfers, that the correct movements in the golf swing must be continually reinforced.
That's why the Golf Swing Lag Training System when joined together in the various combinations with the basic lag trainer obtains results that are quite immediate and spectacular and with continued use, they will endure for as long as the golfer plays the game. The students experience feelings and positions that their bodies have never gotten into, enabling them to dramatically increase their clubhead speed and impact alignments through emulating the lag of a tour pro. The point here is that you cannot repeat something that you've never been able to feel.
It's this new combination that provides the correct feelings of lag that are not available when the components are used separately.
A well known golf instructor, Manuel de la Torre, once said that it was important not to give a student something to work on that if they overdid it, it would become the opposite fault, i.e. correcting a slice and thereby turning that fault into a pull hook. With the Golf Swing Lag Training System, there is no problem with repeating the drills over and over, because the student is performing in real time the correct body movements and getting the instant feedback that helps them learn to lag the club like a tour pro. This provides the golfer with feedback on the correct holistic movement of the body in relation to the golf club throughout the entire stroke in an incrementally adjustable manner.
Another advantage that this device provides is that it helps a golfer co-ordinate the swinging of the arms and hands with the turning of the body. Most golfers don't know how to do this correctly. Any amateur golfer will tell you that it is very difficult to consistently replicate the coordination of the correct timing of all the body parts used in the golf swing. Many devices have been invented to alert the golfer when they are prematurely releasing the club with the incorrect movement. However, the Golf Swing Lag Training System is the only one that teaches the golfer the exact movements that they should be performing with their hand and wrists as they are coordinated with the turning of the body. Once the feel of lag is accomplished and trained, then ball contact is more consistent with every stroke in golf, from chipping and pitching, to the full swing. The Golf Swing Lag Training System provides immediate results in distance and accuracy of shots and can be used to rekindle the feeling of the correct swing even after a winter away from golf practice.
It should also be apparent that this could help any game where a participant is involved with an implement used to strike a ball. It is also apparent that various lengths and weights should be available to accommodate the difference in the bodies of men, women and children golfers.